<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>okaru and kampei. by seizonsha</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470580">okaru and kampei.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/seizonsha/pseuds/seizonsha'>seizonsha</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Amusement Parks, Blood, F/M, Komaeda Nagito's Luck Cycle, Love, One Shot, Poetry, Scars, Stars, Tea, mentioned blood, nothing in here is actually very triggering or explicit. i'm just being careful, this is really hard to tag.</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:29:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470580</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/seizonsha/pseuds/seizonsha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>he is withering, perishing, decaying with every step; </p><p>komaeda nagito is the living dead.</p><p>/</p><p>oh, how she wishes this night could last forever. the wind is sharp against her face, pleasant but not cold enough to hurt. her retinas are seared with the afterimage of bright lights, signs that advertise thrill rides and haunted houses, game stands that are rigged to be lost and overpriced food.</p><p>komaeda’s kind of too tall. she buries her face into the crook of his arm. he is warm, he is safe.</p><p>“of course, nanami-san,” he answers, delayed. his voice is airy, unaffected. maybe he’s not really here. that’s okay.</p><p>oh, how she wishes this night could last forever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Komaeda Nagito &amp; Nanami Chiaki, Komaeda Nagito/Nanami Chiaki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>okaru and kampei.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/khattikeri/gifts">khattikeri</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a slight warning:</p><p>there's a poem used within this work by the poet hakushu kitahara. it contains two very, very brief mentions of harakiri - better known as seppuku, or disemboweling oneself. they are not explicit. they are not to be worried about. one is after the phrase "some other holiday". the other is at the very end of the work. feel free to skip them - it's just a little poetry, and the work can be interpreted enough ways for them to not matter.</p><p>anyway. please enjoy this work.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>the summer air smells like burning wood and cigarette smoke, half past midnight and so dark that the yellow streetlights halo komaeda in waxy yellow shadows. he is sharp where nanami is soft, all jagged edges and kitchen knives; he is her patron saint, her saving grace; a god of luck cast out on the streets to rot with the car-accident carcasses.</p><p> </p><p>his cheekbones catch the dying moonlight and hold it close. </p><p> </p><p>the roads are empty save for the two of them, white clouds floating in an empty grey sky. gentle-pink nanami and sickly-green komaeda below the stars.</p><p> </p><p>her gaze lingers on one for too long, and he notices, eyes etched with peace-memorial silence. it burns a little brighter than the others, sits a little lower in the sky; </p><p> </p><p>maybe the weight of all that fire is pulling it down, sending it careening into the ground like a meteorite. </p><p> </p><p>“hey, what’s that one?” </p><p> </p><p>“that’s not a star. it’s venus,” komaeda murmurs, alpha centauri reflected in his pupils. they seem to flare and dilate randomly, like solar flares, like splendid suns lashing out in a fit of fiery rage. “but, sometimes it’s called the evening or morning star.”</p><p> </p><p>venus. she’s heard it from video games and junior high science classes. the word sounds foreign and pretty; like mermaids and mountain ranges. </p><p> </p><p>“it’s truly awe-inspiring, how people will latch onto anything; change what it is, its very soul, for the sake of their own hope.”</p><p> </p><p>nanami’s not sure about that. it really does just look like a big star, to her, so she can see why the people who named it might not have realised that it wasn’t one.</p><p> </p><p>still, though, she thinks, looking at komaeda, washed-out, crowned and deified by the watery orange streetlamps overhead, maybe it’s worth humouring him. </p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>white hair melts into whiter pillows, komaeda’s collarbones gilded with late-morning sunrays. the sun pours through the half-open window like ribbons in the palms of nanami’s hands, chains of paper cranes and damp hair fresh from the shower curling against bare shoulders.</p><p> </p><p>idly, she reaches for the window, pushes it gently out into the half-day, and the curtains waver with the breeze. the air smells sweet, like honeysuckle and tearful goodbyes, and as the clouds cut marshmallow lines through bluebird skies, she inhales through her nose. it’s unusually cold, for summer; the air is coppery and damp with the promise of rain, acrid like acetone and addictive.</p><p> </p><p>when komaeda is asleep, he appears far younger than he does awake. his pale complexion washes him out like cheap watercolours and ages him beyond his years; the wispy white hair of an old man, slender, shaky hands. his features smooth out, that constant look of concern disappearing.</p><p> </p><p>it’s calming.</p><p> </p><p>often, nanami wishes he would sleep more, if only to see him so at peace; but it’s a selfish desire. komaeda nagito is the ocean tides, the sea breeze late at night, the rain pouring down in the early morning — only half-there, but already rushing headfirst into his aspirations. if he stops now, stops at all, it will be nothing short of a miracle, and nanami has no intention of parting seas.</p><p> </p><p>she could disturb him, could wake him, hear the honesty in his voice that he’d be too groggy to hide, but nanami isn’t so cruel. he looks angelic, calm, now, and he is all the more beautiful for it.  </p><p> </p><p>the weather’s been worse than usual, the past few days; rainwater drips down from the trees outside, splitting the sunlight into rainbows across the sheets, across bare skin and through glasses of water left untouched. it’s the kind of weather where nanami would want to sit by the window all day long, pulling cherry blossoms from the trees (but they’re long out of season) and letting the petals fall apart in the palms of her hands.</p><p> </p><p>she moves to close the window. it swings shut with a click that makes her almost-flinch.</p><p> </p><p>“nanami-san.”</p><p> </p><p>he’s awake, awake, awake.</p><p> </p><p>a part of her feels guilty for waking him up, half happy to hear his voice - and then she feels guilty for that. his shirt slips from his shoulder as he pushes himself up, sharp collarbones and skin like bone china. </p><p> </p><p>“good morning. i’m making earl grey.” </p><p> </p><p>he poises himself inelegantly, chin resting on his knee and fingers winding spirals into the bedsheets.</p><p> </p><p>“i’ll pass,” fragile words, “i’d hate to break any of your porcelain. someone like me would just contaminate it —. ”</p><p> </p><p>“that’s not true at all.”</p><p> </p><p>komaeda laughs like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, like he can’t hear her in the first place, like there are conch shells over his ears and all he can hear is the crash of make-believe seas. </p><p> </p><p>maybe it’s deliberate, the way he dismisses her attempts at hospitality; perhaps he feels as though he owes her too much, that he is drowning in favours he can never repay.</p><p> </p><p>but nanami doesn’t know for sure, doesn’t know if he feels guilt or anger or hatred or distaste, if komaeda, ceramic and delicate, simply doesn’t like earl grey tea and her new teacups. so, as she rises at the whistle of the kettle like a soldier off to war, parting ways with his sweetheart at the station, </p><p> </p><p>she can’t help feel a little bitter about all the tea she’ll be wasting.</p><p> </p><p>it was expensive, after all.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>okaru is weeping</p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>fragile, feeble, like an ex-war general delirious with old age, the sun claws its way up the horizon with shaky hands; a veritable supernova on the brink of extinction. it burns brightly, too brightly — every sin, every deed, every mistake and failure, laid out like scars on lifeless flesh, like stars in an empty sky.</p><p> </p><p>the air is stale, cicadas silent and dead in their shells, a thousand crypts for the unmourned dead. she keeps turning around, searching for a hand in hers, a pair of eyes that shine warmly back</p><p> </p><p>there is nothing. komaeda is fleeting; impermanent and intangible. she cannot reach out to take him by the shoulders and wrap her arms around him, lest he ghost through her, for fear of him being a hallucination. half-alive, half-real. half-human.</p><p> </p><p>is he dead? no. not quite. nanami isn’t so deluded; she knows that she couldn’t fool herself into loving a corpse. maybe he’s immortal, a ‘forever’ among the fleeting.</p><p> </p><p>he is withering, perishing, decaying with every step; </p><p> </p><p>komaeda nagito is the living dead. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>like a velvet hollyhock trembling in the long twilight,</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>there’s a jar’s worth of sugar spilled out across the countertop, bleeding out through broken glass like a stab wound. nanami’s hand is bleeding, just a little, where the glass has caught her palm, and she clutches it to her chest in distant shock.</p><p> </p><p>komaeda’s combing through the sugar and glass, brushing the remnants of the jar into his cupped hand and letting the sugar fall through the gaps, pool in the soft skin that webs his fingers. his hands are long, artistic, uncalloused and smooth — but nonetheless, they are scarred, deep ridges that line his knuckles and ring his thumbs. </p><p> </p><p>there must be a dozen childhood falls here; hundreds of long-faded memories, stories he won’t remember, laid out on his skin. </p><p> </p><p>his white hands are scarred, scarred, scarred, branded with the marks of a criminal.</p><p> </p><p>but her clothes are stained, red, red, red. komaeda smiles apologetically at her, as though he broke the jar across her hand, as though he is the reason she’ll have to throw out this shirt. maybe it would settle her nerves, if it was his fault - crush any idea of malicious intent. </p><p> </p><p>he always does this sort of thing, always offers her those quiet smiles, no matter if it’s a loss to her in some video game or setting fire to the sunflowers on the balcony.</p><p> </p><p>one hand in hers, sticky and kind of uncomfortable. she would wash her hands but nanami suddenly feels like she’s four years old again, crying to her mother with a splinter in her hand, waiting for someone to hold her close. her lower lip trembles, hands quiver, heart shudders all</p><p>as though they might burst into tears at any moment, fall apart like shards of glass from the sugar jar.</p><p> </p><p>“i’m sorry, i’m sorry. let me - ah, no.”</p><p> </p><p>his eyes, muted green like camouflage or dead grass or moss or a thousand more beautiful things, dart around the room. she doesn’t know quite what he’s looking for, no. it doesn’t matter, much. a small cut where her thumb meets her palm, rusty streaks down the back of her hand.</p><p> </p><p>it’ll scar.</p><p> </p><p>this will scar. a pseudo-memento of this day, of komaeda, permanently marked into her skin. </p><p> </p><p>komaeda’s looking through the cabinets, maybe trying to find an old cloth, a dustpan to clean away the spilled sugar with. it’s cheap, unsentimental, replaceable. that’s okay.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>like the touch of soft flannel, </p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>he presses his fingertips into the sugar, and brings them to her lips.</p><p> </p><p>out comes the shard of glass in her palm.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>like daylight fading from buttercup grass,</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>it could be skill, or another case of komaeda’s spiral of luck, but they’re walking home from the amusement park, breath casting white shadows in the night air, and there’s a round plushie in her arms, unicorn horn poking her chin.</p><p> </p><p>it’s just some game character, nothing truly meaningful. the fabric is cheap and smells vaguely of factory plastic. cute, but it’ll fall apart in a year or two.</p><p> </p><p>“thank you,” she murmurs through the unicorn’s mane, reaching out to brush at komaeda’s hand. he swings their joined hands back and forth, playful.</p><p> </p><p>oh, how she wishes this night could last forever. the wind is sharp against her face, pleasant but not cold enough to hurt. her retinas are seared with the afterimage of bright lights, signs that advertise thrill rides and haunted houses, game stands that are rigged to be lost and overpriced food.</p><p> </p><p>komaeda’s kind of too tall. she buries her face into the crook of his arm. he is warm, he is safe.</p><p> </p><p>“of course, nanami-san,” he answers, delayed. his voice is airy, unaffected. maybe he’s not really here. that’s okay.</p><p> </p><p>oh, how she wishes this night could last forever.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>and like a ball of dandelion fuzz floating buoyantly.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>there are dried cherry blossoms left over from spring on the windowsill, wilted and desaturated like a poorly lit polaroid. they must be long-dead, months old and crumbling; never quite as dignified in death as in life.</p><p> </p><p>perhaps it would have been an act of mercy to kill them as soon as she pulled them from the branch. perhaps she should have left them there.</p><p> </p><p>her phone’s eerily silent, but she doesn’t know what she should be expecting. it’s late, after all.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>however much she cries, she does not run out of tears,</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>every unread message is a monument to her failures.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>kampei is dead, kampei is dead,</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>“good morning.”</p><p> </p><p>stunned, or maybe just surprised, he drops a plate, white porcelain disintegrating across the hard floor. nanami’s head turns sharply to watch it break.</p><p> </p><p>she feels a little guilty.</p><p> </p><p>it was a nice plate, after all. they bought them together, as a set. one of those silly “couple” things that they sell on white day. she’s sure they still sell them, on one of those cheap resale sites —- maybe they’ll just put them up for sale again next year, rebrand them for some other holiday.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>the young and handsome kampei has committed </p><p>         harakiri.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>cheap, unsentimental, replaceable. </p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>okaru weeps, thinking of the smell of the young man.</p><p>“it was,” she remembers, “stifling like onions stored</p><p>          in the malting-room;</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>nanami’s eyes hurt.</p><p> </p><p>oh, not that kind of simple, stinging dryness that comes with illness or allergy. if she cared to look in a mirror, maybe they’d be bloodshot; if she cared to pull the pins from out her hair, they’d stop poking into her scalp. the backs of her eyes ache as though she has been crying all night long, as though they might never weep again.</p><p> </p><p>but nanami cannot bring herself to sob.</p><p> </p><p> the bedsheets are fresh, still smelling of komaeda. of the body wash she steals from him and woodsmoke, and even a single smudge of mascara will mean washing all that away. her phone convulses on the floor beside her, muted ringtone playing out a love song in 8-bit.</p><p> </p><p>she reaches for it, absently. probably a notification from some game - ‘your party is waiting for you! adventure calls!’</p><p> </p><p>that kind of stupid thing. she doesn’t play them.</p><p> </p><p>blue light, shadows across soft features.</p><p> </p><p>“oh.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>he felt so soft, like the outdoor light of may,</p><p>the man’s breath burning like black tea.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>komaeda ought to wear more lip balm. his lips are kind of chapped; maybe it’s the weather. it doesn’t matter.</p><p> </p><p>ivory fingers, ivory hands, running through her hair. he smooths her bangs away from her eyes, holds her face in his hands as though she is some beautiful thing; some crown jewel, some saving grace, a patron saint to be praised, adored, feared.</p><p> </p><p>it’s supposed to be more romantic with your eyes closed, right? that’s what the dating sims tell her, anyway. you win love with material things, with frivolous acts of favouritism, by playing through cutscenes and finding a walkthrough for the ending you want.</p><p> </p><p>she opens her eyes. his are still closed, white eyelashes over white skin. he reminds her of a statue, a pharaoh, preserved and apotheosised for all to see.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>when i was embraced, the daytime salt flats glistened</p><p>         blue,</p><p>and the nerve of a parsley blossom sharpened,</p><p>         became pale and dry.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>it’s supposed to be like fireworks going off in the back of her head, isn’t it? that’s what the love stories say, the visual novels, the anime, the movies. love is supposed to be immediate, dazzling. she’s supposed to be able to describe the taste of his lips, the high of a kiss, recall it all from memory like an actress reading off her lines, like a character blurting out ones and zeros.</p><p> </p><p>nanami thinks that’s silly. nobody really thinks like that, after all.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>i remember the trembling of his inner thighs, and my </p><p>          lips that i let him kiss.</p><p>on the day we parted his white hand smelled strongly</p><p>           of gunpowder;</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>empty skies, cloudless heavens. the kind of dim day that reminds her of volcanic ash, of suns that burn up and die as they rush headfirst into the horizon.</p><p> </p><p>the sand pours through his fingers like gunpowder, like sugar, blowing into his eyes.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>i had been thoughtfully cutting vegetables until i got </p><p>         on the palanquin;”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>it was certainly worth it, humouring him.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>but kampei has killed himself.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this work is a gift for a dear friend of mine. hi there. i was going to write something long and sentimental, but i'm really not that kind of person. also, i think it'd be a little embarrassing for us both.</p><p>they've been supremely kind to me, and many others; i am forever indebted to them. also, they're a very good writer, and i wholly encourage everyone to check out some of their work. they're listed as a recipient of this work.</p><p>thank you for reading.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>